He graduated at the top of his high school class and attended Cornell University. He published his first short story at the age of twenty.
He left graduate school after a failed suicide attempt and stayed in a psychiatric ward for over a month. Upon release, he began a downward spiral into drug and alcohol addiction, followed by a string of petty crimes and misdemeanors.
Until getting sober at the age of twenty-three, Matthew lived a playboy lifestyle on the east coast, funded by the considerable inheritance released to him on his eighteenth birthday. He never stopped writing.
After over fifteen rejections, he queried Pamela Wing with Ten Thousand Nights in 2007. The book was published to national and eventually global acclaim.
I watched, dazed, as everything I wanted to know about Matt spilled onto the internet.
July. The month of Matt.
The month without Matt.
Even the big news stations and papers ran stories on M. Pierce's unveiling. No one could get an interview from him, not even a comment, but Pam quietly confirmed the author's identity and released several generic statements.
"Mr. Sky's private life was very important to his writing," said Pamela Wing of the Granite Wing Agency. "The media has respected him as an artist; now they need to respect him as a human and stop splashing his life all over the net."
One reporter finally caught Matt outside of his apartment. An altercation ensued. The reporter was badly beaten. Charges were filed, then settled outside of court.
The local papers and news stations lost interest by the middle of July.
Fit to Print got national attention for uncovering the story but never revealed its source. They continued to run a column on Matt's life and writing. Pictures appeared there regularly.
I saw a ten-year-old Matt boating with his parents, his hair swept back.
There was Matt in his high school graduation gown.
Matt on the rowing team at Cornell.
Matt and his friends riding lunch trays down a snowy hill.
Matt and his girlfriend, Bethany Meres.
Want to tell you so many things.
It was Bethany Meres, various articles speculated, who released the information that led to Matt's uncovering.
"Bethany was crazy about Matt," said a close friend of Meres, "and he was crazy about her. She said more than once that she thought a proposal was coming. Then he ended it out of the blue." That was three days before the story broke.
Despite his non-disclosure agreement, Matt never pressed charges.
He kept his head down.
Bethany made no statements.
Pam fielded the occasional reporter.
Matt's family and friends maintained a stony silence.
As for me, I was nothing to no one in the story of Matt.
I ignored his calls. I didn't listen to his messages. I didn't read his emails. Eventually, I changed my cell phone number and made a new email account.
With a loan from my mother and my first paycheck from the Granite Wing Agency, I got a small condo in Denver.
I began my hollow life.
There was nowhere I could go and nothing I could do to escape memories of Matt. I accepted a perpetual feeling of nausea as a new condition of my existence.
I loved him—I realized this when it all collapsed—and I had never known him.
So it was possible to love a stranger.
I didn't allow myself to dwell on the extent of Matt's lies. Matt the businessman. Matt with the bachelor pad. Matt calling me his. Matt laughing and smirking as I enthused about M. Pierce. And worst of all, Matt making me an unwilling accomplice to his cheating.
How could he do it?
How could he smile and chat with my family while he used me like that?
The only people who knew why I was suffering were my family members. I told Chrissy, Chrissy told mom, and mom told dad. If Jay knew, he didn't care.
Matt didn't go to the house, but mom thought she saw him drive by a few times.
He didn't come to the agency.